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The Final Problem – The Reichenbach Fall

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The Final Problem is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring Sherlock Holmes. The story is set in 1891 and we are introduced to Sherlock Holmes’s greatest opponent, the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty. Moriarty realizes that his devious plots won’t be successful unless Sherlock Holmes is stopped. Permanently. I won’t go into the plot (much) because that would ruin the book for you. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle later ranked “The Final Problem” fourth on his personal list of the twelve best Holmes stories. He wrote The Final Problem intending it to be exactly what its name says. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle meant to stop writing about his famous detective after this short story; he felt the Sherlock Holmes stories were distracting him from more serious literary efforts and that “killing” Holmes off was the only way of getting his career back on track. Conan Doyle sought to sweeten the pill by letting Holmes go in a blaze of glory, having rid the world of a criminal so powerful and dangerous that any further task would be trivial in comparison.

But because of enormous fan pressure he had to bring back Holmes in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House”.

I watched the third episode of Sherlock – The Reichenbach Fall, fourth time in the last few days. The episode is that good. The second season of Sherlock was even better than season one. The third episode particularly was exceptionally well done. The title, The Reichenbach Falls, is in reference the waterfall into which Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty supposedly plunged to their deaths during a fierce tussle in ‘The Final Problem’. This episode was the modernization of ‘The Final Problem’. In The Final Problem, Professor Moriarty’s mission was to kill Sherlock Holmes. In The Reichenbach Fall, Moriarty was not happy enough with just killing Sherlock Holmes, he defames him too. This makes the plot very interesting and it makes sense as only a criminal mastermind like Moriarty come up with something like this.

The reimagined Moriarty is not a professor, he is a psychopath. In Sherlock, Moriarty wants to kill homes not because he was obstructing his criminal web but just for the sake of beat his foe. Andrew Scott’s acting is commendable by the way.

The Final Problem also was crafted nicely. The insanity of Moriarty was pronounced when he shot himself. Instead of the waterfall, Sherlock jumps from the roof to save his friends.

It has been announced that Season 3 of Sherlock will be aired in 2013. It is going to be a long wait.